The Grey Brethren

The Grey Brethren is a posthumously published 1905 collection of prose, poetry, and fairy tales by the English writer Margaret Fairless Barber (pen name Michael Fairless, 1869–1901), fully titled The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse. Barber was frail and ill for much of her life, yet wrote the widely read The Roadmender; most of the pieces in this book had previously appeared in publications such as The Pilot, The Commonwealth, and The Parents' Review, and the Christmas-themed pieces and poems had been issued as small booklets by Mowbray & Son. The collection does not rely on its subject matter for appeal; in the preface the editor says what holds these miscellaneous pieces together is the author's personal gift of communicating heart to heart. The opening piece, which gives the book its title, is a reminiscence of Quaker religious life, describing childhood days in a small Quaker community on a hill, two elderly sisters in dove-grey silk, the old gardener Benjamin, and a bedridden woman painter. Other pieces include essays on a German Christmas Eve and All Souls' Day, on rivers and streams and spring scenery, as well as light sketches and short poems such as "A Lark's Song" and "'Luvly Miss'." The four "stories told to children" at the end of the book—The Dreadful Griffin, The Discontented Daffodils, The Fairy Fluffikins, and The Story of the Tinkle-Tinkle—were originally told aloud by the author to children of different ages around her; their humor and innocence reveal a side entirely different from the quiet style of The Roadmender. The book is short yet preserves the author's dual sensitivity to faith, nature, and childhood, and serves as a supplementary text for those who, having come to know her through The Roadmender, wish to read further. This entry belongs to the "Complete Collection of English Original Novels (1,600 titles total)," as the 1,000th "English classic"; the text is in the original English with no Chinese translation.